The death of Dr. George Tiller, while ghastly, comes as no surprise, as the past 28 years have seen an increase in ‘normalization’ of Christian extremism and a refusal by both the media and government to confront violent Christian fundamentalism. Yet a majority of the most horrific domestic terrorism and international war crimes committed by Americans have been done under the guise of Evangelical Christianity. An incomplete list:

• Eric Rudolph, who was motivated by his Catholicism to end the ‘abortion holocaust’, bombed the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, several abortion clinics, and a gay/lesbian club in Atlanta.

• The Oklahoma City Bombing, the largest act of domestic terrorism in America’s history, was executed by survivalist and right-wing militia member Timothy McVeigh.

• In 2003, while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated. Bush told Chirac, “This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”. [source]

• Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld presented intelligence and defense reports on Iraq and Afghanistan to George W. Bush with cover pages dedicated to ‘militaristic passages of the Bible':

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld routinely used militaristic passages from the Bible on the cover pages of White House intelligence documents, according to new revelations by GQ magazine….

One republished on the GQ website came from March 31, 2003, showing a US tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the United States invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Over the image was printed a verse from Ephesians: “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”

• During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush told several people that “‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did.” [source]

• Evangelical Christians in the military were caught distributing Bibles to Afghanis [source]

• All told, there have been over 600,000 civilians dead in Iraq and 80,000 civilians dead in Afghanistan, which have been viewed as little more than modern-day Christian crusades by the predominately Muslim victims [source]

And yet there has been a complete unwillingness to brand what a significant portion of Americans identify with as dangerous or extremist. But for American democracy to thrive as it was envisioned — equitable, just, and secular — the growing force of Christian radicalism must be confronted in American society.